People have been building homes cheaper than that for a long time now. What makes this different? When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time on my grandfather's f

People have been building homes cheaper than that for a long time now. What makes this different? When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time on my grandfather's farm in southern Kentucky. I didn't realize it, but it was rural poverty. He didn't have electricity or running water (this was the early 1970s). But at least it was a wood house, with glass windows and doors and a decent fireplace and a coal-burning stove. Back in the far back of the same property, up a dirt trail in the woods, an old black man lived alone in a shack. One room, walls made out of tar paper and corrugated steel. That's a house that can survive in that kind of terrain, and it cost a lot less than $20k. (Interestingly, my father treated that old man with great respect and deference. My father didn't respect anyone, so it boggled me, even as a small child.) Around the world, entire neighborhoods of "shantytowns" arise around cities, made from the discarded junk of richer people. Shelter is shelter. People build it because they can't make a living wage and pay someone else to build a house for them...